Monday, January 11, 2010

"Ooo, sooorry, that is incorrect! We would have accepted '&', '+', or even the word 'and' written out. This, however, is so WTF crazy that the show key grips will now take you out back and shake you vigorously. Thanks for playing! Buh-bye, now!"

some people make their "and" symbols almost like a greek alpha. if you're going fast, i can see it resembling a <. on the other hand... dude, you're decorating a birthday cake! take your freakin' time.

I'll admit, form a distance, the cake didn't look that bad, albeit I can't read the (assumed) last name. Upon enlarging the picture, I work it that the cake is to a Sean (I used to do my capital 's' that way, just neater) but I have to ask what is used to make the clouds on the cake? Either they are deformed Mentos mints, or weird sea-life eggs, I am not sure. Either way, the cake is now off the menu of my mind.

< could be an arrow head, leading us to understand that there is a name and/or gender change going on here... "Alexandria" is becoming "Sean." Not necessarily a birthday celebrating an actual day of birth, so much as an announcement of the new you, but we know by now that there really is no occasion left that hasn't been spelled out for family and friends on a cake. Nothing new under the sun. Or the rainbow.

I just wanted to share a quick Cake Wrecks story that made my day yesterday.

I'm a college student supporting myself by working for a computer repair/retail company which can be a very stressful job. Yesterday, the cutest little elderly woman came in with a computer problem that was a very simple fix, but had her very upset.

In my attempt to calm her down and show her how simple it was and that she would be just fine, she mentioned that she wanted to get home so she could see the Sunday Sweets section of Cake Wrecks!

No less than 10 minutes later, we were laughing and exchanging our favorite wrecks and sweets while I sent her on her way with a fully-functional computer.

So, thanks for making my typically stressful job less stressful, Jen and John!

SkippyMom said This is a wreck? A minor mishap perhaps, but a pretty cake otherwise

If anything, I'd argue that this makes it even more of a wreck. It's like doing a perfect balance beam routine and then tripping over your own feet as you take a bow.

I'm pretty sure this is an example of a cake that comes to the store pre-decorated and someone in the bakery department writes on it. So as pretty as the cake is, the inscriber is probably not the one who decorated it.

I don't mean to be to critical, but I was surprised to see your choice of abbreviation. I love your blog because it's hilarious and clean. I would rather see naked clown cupcakes than naughty word abbreviations. Just my opinion. I really do love the blog.

If you enlarge the picture and check out the top right corner, you can see the order form with the instructions for personalization. It looks like the first name is supposed to be "Sean" but it is hard to make out what the symbol in between the names is supposed to be.

I support WTF as a minced oath no more scandalous than Gosh, Darn or @$*! It stands for What the Firetruck?

I do not support the less than sign as a substitute ampersand. I do think the customer filled out the form with a quickly-written α-like plus sign and the wreckerator didn't magically know what was intended.

The blog has officially changed my life. I spent time in a grocery store bakery today ordering a birthday cake for my beloved and beautiful granddaughter who will be ONE on Wednesday. Did I spend my time being creative? quizzing the cake decorating? Carefully explaining what I wanted?

No, there was a very unfortunate clown cupcake cake (I know CCC) and I spent my time wishing for my camera.

Am I the only one to see that there is a blue ink-dot above the n in the second name, like the cake decorator started to spell it incorrectly and then removed it? Jenn, another missed opportunity for teasing!

Wow, so I like this blog a lot less since I became a cake decorator at a big box store. At least when it's nit-picky things like this.

It looks like the person who took the order used the 'and' that looks like a plus sign with the left and bottom points connected, and the decorator did their best to interpret.

People want some weird stuff on their cakes, so the decorators follow the orders as closely as they can. You never know.

Also, in response to " ...on the other hand... dude, you're decorating a birthday cake! take your freakin' time."

Maybe 1 in 10 orders that we get *isn't* a birthday cake. When you have a huge pile of orders (anywhere from 1 to 50) to get through in 8 hours (amongst other things), you don't really have time to slow down.

I agree with Doubleryfamily in that WTF is inappropriate. I also was surprised at the clown porn since the rules for submission clearly state that obscene cakes are not allowed. It's one thing to have an anything goes policy, and it's another to have a rather strict policy in writing then push at that boundary like a middle school kid.-- Vanessa

Okay folks, here's the deal. There will be sexual innuendo on cake wrecks. Occasionally, icing looks unintentionally naughty and we joke about it. You'll never see fondant ding dongs or anything else blatantly obscene but there will be suggestive cakes. Sorry.

And there will be the occasional strong language if you consider words like ass and abbreviations like WTF to be strong language. Again I am sorry.

We go to a lot of trouble to make sure the content we publish is safe for work and I seriously doubt that any child would ever see any of our cakes as anything but cake. We aim for a pg rating on all of our posts so plan accordingly.

I agree with John, and I will go one further by saying that I think it's great that families can share a good laugh over CW *MOST OF THE TIME,* but maybe it would be wise to look at it first to make sure the day's content is something you wish to allow your children to see.

It's like not counting on a PG rating to cover everything that offends your senses, and so perhaps you should watch movies before allowing the kids to see them. It's much better than being angry afterward, and it's part of parenting.

Think of the days you'd rather not have the kiddos read Jen's blog (as in, 'the blog belonging to JEN') as being what we in the 1980s might have known as "a very special episode of" CW. Unless/even if you are paying them big money as a sponsor of the blog, it's not your time in the sun.

If it is you, as an adult, who are offended by this mild content, I recommend you look elsewhere for your amusement. The internet is a big place.

P.S. As an American public school teacher, I promise you that your kids already know what WTF stands for, whether you want them to or not. And they'd probably be able to explain even more than that, I'm sorry to report.

I suppose this could have been based on a note that said "Happy Birthday to Jean from Alexandria." But that would have probably been shorthanded as "Alexandria > Jean"...or something. And that seems like an awkward message to put on a cake, anyway.

At least they didn't divide by zero. The last thing we need is some wreckorator tearing a hole in the space-time continuum and opening a portal to a parallel dimension. It's not all badly spelled cakes and afternoon cups-of-tea in those places - I saw 'The Mist,' I know what goes down. I hope next time it's just a misplaced integral or a poorly drawn cosine graph.

You guys don't have anything to apologize for. Your blog is consistent, and you do good work. You just did a great charity drive (how soon they forget!) You seem like fun, interesting, and overall decent people. Sometimes clowns happen to play with tinkle toys. And the world just keeps turning, you know? It's not your fault that some people aren't ready to deal with it.

I'm thinking the decorator didn't want to do an ampersand or maybe their ampersands don't look so great, so he or she just did the < thinking it would look better. But come on, a plus sign would have been a lot better.

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A Cake Wreck is any cake that is unintentionally sad, silly, creepy, inappropriate - you name it. A Wreck is not necessarily a poorly-made cake; it's simply one I find funny, for any of a number of reasons. Anyone who has ever smeared frosting on a baked good has made a Wreck at one time or another, so I'm not here to vilify decorators: Cake Wrecks is just about finding the funny in unexpected, sugar-filled places.

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